Ask The Entrepreneurs is a regular series where members of the Young Entrepreneur Council are asked a single question that aims to help Lifehack readers level up their own lives, whether in a area of management, communication, business or life in general.
Here’s the question posed in this edition of Ask The Entrepreneurs:
What is one surprising task you have completely outsourced in the last year?
1. Follow-Up Emails
We are implementing Infusionsoft and Freshdesk. Before, I had to manually send emails to prospective clients, but now the automated marketing or the canned responses (that look as if I wrote the email manually) write them for me. It saves me a ton of time without sacrificing quality or service.
– Derek Capo, Next Step China
2. Hiring and Filtering Process
We hired an outsourced HR person who comprehends automation to help us define roles and design the process behind hiring.
– Benji Rabhan, MorrisCore
3. Customer Service
Customer service is one of the easiest and most effective business functions to outsource. It’s all about creating good templates and documentation for your support staff. Once you’ve done that, it’s a great function to outsource because in most cases, many of the requests are very similar. One of the best ways to do this is to find a work-from-home mom or dad who can help you part-time.
– Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com
4. Product Descriptions
Pictures are now detailed enough that we can fully outsource all of our product descriptions.
– Josh Weiss, Bluegala
5. HR Tasks
We signed up for a service that automated our entire HR department — complete with employee manuals and training. The icing on the cake for me was that they also handle any legal consequences, including unemployment or worker’s compensation.
– Phil Laboon, Clear Sky SEO
6. Public Relations
I believe PR to be a core strategic initiative and never thought we would outsource it at Poshly. With the expansion of press efforts in the past year, we decided to outsource our PR efforts to EJ Media Group. The best thing about working with an external PR firm of fantastic caliber is that we collaborate to find the best outlets for publicity, and they can leverage their expertise and contacts.
– Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.
7. Accounting
I’m pretty organized and like having my hands on the accounting, but I found it much more efficient and scalable to outsource it to the professionals. If you’re doing menial labor worth less money than your time is worth, it’s time to outsource that to another person.
– Russ Oja, Seattle Windows and Construction, LLC
8. Social Media
I have a genuine love of online community interactions. I love everything about social media, from moderating chats to meeting new people. As my business grew, I just couldn’t keep up with my outlets the way I need to. I now have a social media manager who I trust and appreciate.
– Maren Hogan, Red Branch Media
9. Administrative Tasks
We share a virtual administration among our executive team, and it’s worked out surprisingly well. Although, it does mean I have to get my own coffee.
– Danny Boice, Speek
